Thursday, April 7, 2016

Delaney
Blair loves her job at Echo Lake's Mercy Hospital, where she's developed a
reputation for being smart, fair, and driven. When she's assigned to cut
funding, she has to temporarily relocate her office, put on borrowed scrubs,
and go toe-to-toe with Dr. Joshua Mackenzie, the interim head of the pediatrics
department. His killer smile and rock-star body are distractions Delaney could
do without, but she's determined to stay focused while she brings his budget
into line.

It's not working.

Beloved by his colleagues and patients alike, Josh is too busy caring for sick
kids to talk numbers with the sexy, stiletto-clad Delaney. Every time they talk
business, tensions run high…but so does a powerful attraction neither of them
can ignore. When an emergency brings Mercy to its knees, Delaney and Josh must
work together to save lives. But can they also find a way into each other's
hearts?

“You’re just going to have
to go down there, Delaney.” Megan propped a hip on Delaney’s desk two days
later. Delaney envied her assistant’s long skirt, gypsy earrings, and long,
loose cotton blouse. In college, she’d have topped it off with a head scarf and
combat boots, but for the workplace, she’d gone with her standard-issue leather
sandals.

Delaney looked down at
her own outfit and wondered when she’d turned into a toned-down version of her
country club mother. Her neatly ironed blouse was set off by a perfectly
matched skirt and jacket, and as she fingered the pearls at her throat, she
sighed. Then she let her eyes coast down her calves, down to the Jimmy Choos
she’d bought just last month. It was her splurge, her bow to girliness and
inappropriate spending, and damn, she loved these shoes.

She really did need to
ditch the pearls, though.

“I can’t just go down
there, Megan.” Delaney felt a tingle at the base of her neck, just thinking of
walking onto the pediatric floor. No, she definitely couldn’t go down there.

“Well, he’s obviously not
coming to you.”

“How can he just ignore
my messages like this? It’s downright rude.”

“Or he’s downright busy.
Have you seen the bed count on pediatrics this week?”

“No.” Delaney cringed. It
wasn’t the kind of thing she kept track of on a daily basis.

“There is always the
possibility that he’s not intentionally ignoring you. Just saying.”

“I’ll check.” Delaney
clicked into the system that listed current inpatient numbers. When she got to
the pediatric floor, her eyes widened. “Holy—”

“Exactly.” Megan raised
her eyebrows.

“We don’t even have that many pediatric beds.”

“I know. They had to move
a couple of the teenagers up to adult floors to make space.”

Delaney clicked back
through the past month, and the patient counts went up and down a little bit,
but not much.

“I’m just saying—this
could be why Dr. Mackenzie hasn’t called back.” Megan leaned close to Delaney
and plucked open her top button. “Which means you, third floor, this afternoon.
He’s clearly isn’t coming to you.”

Delaney felt the chills
creep down her spine. She had never actually been on Mercy’s pediatric
floor—had never been on any pediatric
floor—not since Parker had died.

“Delaney? You okay?”
Megan’s brow creased as she studied Delaney’s face. “You are six shades of
white, girl. Does talking to non-executive-suite people make you this scared?”

Delaney nodded slowly. “It’s
okay. It’s been—a long time since he died. Not like you would think of it.”

“But I should have. I’m
really sorry.” Megan tried to look into her eyes, but Delaney’s felt all
shifty. “Do you want me to go with you?”

“No, Meg. I don’t want to
go at all.”

“But—”

“I know. He’s not coming
to me.” She took a deep breath, blowing it out slowly. Maybe it wouldn’t be
horrible. Maybe she wouldn’t melt into a panic-puddle at the elevator doors.
Maybe she wouldn’t see Parker everywhere she looked.

USA Today bestselling author Maggie McGinnis is a Golden Heart Finalist who lives in New England, vastly outnumbered by both children and cats. She writes sweet romances set in Montana and Vermont, and feels extremely fortunate that through her books, she gets to fall in love every single day. She's a sucker for romantic comedies, popcorn, and the perfect green pen, and if she wasn't an author, she'd totally be rocking a Nashville club in her pink cowgirl boots. It's probably good that she embraced the author thing, because her singing skills are better suited to the shower, and really? Pink cowgirl boots?